ETH Breaks Out, Inflation Woes, and Nvidia Dominates

Big week for all of you on team ETH!

This Week in Crypto

ETH made history this week, sailing into uncharted territory:

• Ether surged past $4,900 to new highs, clearing its prior record of $4,867 set in November 2021.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin floundered a bit (a lot of water metaphors today apparently):

• A whale dumped 24,000 BTC (over $2.7B), causing a flash crash below $111,000.

  • The whale sold coins that hadn’t moved in more than five years, wiping out $310M in long positions.

• And funnily enough, most of the money is being moved into Ethereum - $2B bought and $1.3B staked. New player for team ETH!

Bitcoin ETFs saw their sixth consecutive day of net outflows, while Ether ETFs posted $341M in inflows. 

• Ethereum’s exchange reserves are shrinking while demand grows, potentially creating a supply shock.

Jerome Powell (temporarily) saved the day:

• Powell struck a dovish tone at the Jackson Hole summit last week, suggesting rate cuts are coming, causing crypto to briefly surge before the weekend whale chaos.

• Around the time of the speech, ETH saw about $120M in short liquidations in a one-hour period.

In the craziest news of the week, Trump Media announced a strategic partnership with Crypto.com, buying $105M in CRO tokens while Crypto.com takes $50M in DJT stock.

• The deal creates Trump Media Group CRO Strategy Inc, which plans to become the world’s largest CRO holder.

• CRO jumped 30% to 21 cents based just on the news.

This Week in TradFi

Wall Street’s main stock indexes fell today, with technology stocks declining most, after inflation data came in higher than the central bank’s target.

• The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index rose 2.6% in July on an annual basis - above the central bank’s 2% target.

• Underlying prices suggest U.S. tariffs on imports are starting to reflect in the prices of certain goods. 

• The U.S. tariff exemption for package imports valued under $800 also ended today, raising costs for businesses and consumers.

• Traders are still expecting a 25bps rate cut in September, though.

• The S&P 500 and Dow Jones did have record high closes yesterday after Nvidia’s quarterly report confirmed that spending on AI infrastructure continues to be strong.

  • Nvidia’s report included a 56% increase in quarterly revenue. 

  • Other companies gained as well as a result, with Alphabet stock increasing 2%, Amazing increasing 1%, and Broadcom increasing almost 3%.

On the international front:

• Canada’s economy contracted in Q2 much more than anticipated, as U.S. tariffs squeeze exports.

  • GDP for the quarter decreased by 1.6%, bringing total annualized growth in the first six months of the year down to 0.4%.

• Brazil’s government deficit jumped in July, up to $10.9B. 

  • The increase was fueled by a 28.3% inflation-adjusted increase in government spending, driven by court-ordered payments and pension benefits.

• German inflation also rose more than expected in August (2.1%), marking an end to the disinflationary process of the last few months. And to make bad news worse, unemployment in the country topped 3 million for the first time in a decade.

This Week in Tech

Nvidia’s earnings are in, and the company reported yet another quarter of sustained sales growth.

• The company recorded $46.7B in revenue, a 56% increase compared to this same period last year - largely fueled by its AI-dominated data center business. 

• Net income hit $26.4B in Q2, a 59% increase since this period last year.

• Nvidia brought in $41.1B in revenue from data center sales this quarter, showing that demand for cutting-edge GPUs continues to grow. 

  • Blackwell, the company’s most advanced generation of chips, was responsible for $27B of those sales.

Google upgraded its Gemini chatbot with a new AI image model that gives users more control over editing photos.

• The tool already received huge amounts of attention. Social media users have been raving over an AI image editor in the crowdsourced evaluation platform, LMArena.

• The model appeared to users anonymously under the name “nano-banana”. Since then, Google has said it’s behind the model - which is the native image capability in the company’s Gemini 2.5 Flash AI mode.

• Google says they designed the image model with consumer use cases in mind, like helping users visualize home and garden projects. The model also reportedly has better “world knowledge” and can combine multiple references in a single prompt. 

Elon Musk’s X and xAI filed a lawsuit against Apple and OpenAI on Monday, alleging that the two companies are colluding to hinder competition.

• “In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” the lawsuit reads.

• This is the latest in a long dispute between Musk and Altman. Musk recently sued to block OpenAI’s transition into a for-profit company. Musk then submitted an unsolicited bid to buy OpenAI for $97.4B, which Altman immediately rejected.

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• Framer, a no-code website builder, raised a $100M Series D, at a $2B valuation.

• Maisa AI raised a $25M seed round, led by European VC Creandum.

• Vision startup Eyebot has raised a $20M Series A.

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.